Conventional guns operated by conventional explosives are capable of accelerating objects to a speed of a couple kilometers per second, which is approximately the speed of sound in chemical explosive material. Various proposals have been set forth to provide higher velocity projectiles and some of these are disclosed in W. W. Salisbury, U.S. Pat. No. 2,870,675, granted Jan. 27, 1959, and entitled, "Acceleration Amplifier". In the above patent, Mr. Salisbury discloses an ingenious and somewhat elaborate arrangement for transferring energy from a large conventional projectile moving relatively slowly to a lighter weight projectile made of magnetic material to be accelerated to a higher velocity--hopefully improving on speeds attainable with conventional guns. In addition, in the introduction of the Salisbury patent various other proposed arrangements are described, including an alleged German gun which was stated to be "a moving short circuit between a pair of parallel rails and to have been accelerated to a velocity of 2 kilometers per second". The Salisbury patent notes certain problems relative to the alleged German design. It appears that such a gun would be highly inefficient in view of the dispersion of the magnetic field and other problems of the structure.
Accordingly, a principal object of the present invention is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of unconventional guns such as those noted above.